This Old Man (14 page)

When I turned sixteen, I announced that I was on my own. Hackey was very pleased. In that case, he said, I could go to work. I could have my own apartment, buy lots of clothes. I could even go to school and just work nights and weekends. He was so considerate about working out the details. How thoughtful he was, how heroic and generous to take on a second generation of Janssen women for his noble public service. It was while the details were being worked out that my mother finally woke up and behaved like a proper mother, called the Juvies, and had me sent over to Anza House.

That's where the old I-Don't-Need-Anybody routine fell apart at the seams, because Mr. Saxe, Elizabeth, the girls, Wing, and Old Man poured into my life all at once. That's why I didn't believe Jo, not for a minute.

15

There was a rumor in the wind that we'd be getting a new girl soon, maybe two. The idea scared me.

I told Mr. Saxe about it. “It's not like getting a foreign-exchange student from Australia, you know.”

“You must have seen
Grease
.”

“Okay, forget Australia. France, Mexico. This girl we're getting could be a complete weirdo.”

“Could be.” Mr. Saxe smiled.

“Or really sick.”

“It's possible,” he conceded. “You'll just have to adjust. You seem to be good at adjusting.”

Should I plunge ahead? “Can we talk about something else?”

“Anything you like.” Since he'd blown up at me, he'd become so cooperative.

“What I was wondering was, have you ever felt yourself pulled toward someone?”

“What are you talking about? Tug of war? Falling in love?”

“No, no, I mean as if you were being pulled, the way a car's towed.”

“I'm not sure I know what you're getting at.”

“Pulled by someone you don't even really know?”

Mr. Saxe nodded slowly. I thought he was piecing things together. “Be specific.”

“Old Man. There's something compelling about him.”

“You've been going back to the hospital?”

“Yes, for two weeks already. It's okay. No sign of Hackey.”

“Why do you go?”

“I don't know, I can't help it. He draws me like a magnet. Did you know I've never even seen him? He's never seen me, either. But I feel … dragged by some kind of invisible tow line.”

“Does this frighten you?”

Frighten me? No. It excited me. It made me feel like I was being propelled toward some sort of irresistible destiny. “Do you believe people's lives are all decided for them?”

“Do you believe that?”

“Could you please answer one question without asking me a question?”

“I do not believe our lives are predetermined, no. I believe we have choices. You have choices and control over your life.”

I wasn't sure I believed that. “It's just that, on the other side of the door—”

“What door?”

I was surprised he hadn't followed my track. I thought I was being so clear with the signals. “Old Man's hospital door, didn't you figure that out? Something's waiting for me on his side of the door.”

“What do you think is there?”

I shrugged.

“Have you tried to open the door?”

“No!” There was Old Man's privacy to consider, and Wing standing there like a guard at the gates of the palace. And something else: though I'd been curious about Old Man at first, now I felt that seeing him would spoil something special. Either that, or it would plunge me into whatever it was that was lurking there, waiting for me.

I realized with some astonishment that I had no desire to open the door anymore, and yet I was irresistibly drawn to it, drawn to Old Man's voice and to how I imagined, no,
knew
everything to be in his room. I knew about his bedside table covered with his calligraphy brushes and ink. I saw his drapes, shut tight, admitting just a sliver of light. They are thick gold tapestry with a simple country scene repeated on them: a man viewed from the back as he walks through a meadow. He carries a cane, or a staff. There are some birds, a brook, and a black mountain peak ahead.

I saw Old Man's silver-and-blue brocade robe hanging in his narrow closet. He makes sure the nurse hangs it just so, with the shoulders straight across the hanger, so that when he looks at it from his bed, he sees that the hem hangs even.

I saw his orange procelain teapot, with the bamboo handle that falls to one side. There are black serpents painted on the porcelain, and there are two small cups to match. They sit together like a teacher and two pupils, on a small shelf next to his bed.

The room was always untouched. Nothing was moved, except when Wing spread his bowls out on the table that was wheeled up to Old Man's bed. I saw the white linen napkin, starched fresh each day by Mrs. Kwang, which Wing arranges like a bib for Old Man. When he finishes his dinner, Old Man discreetly dabs at his lips and chin with the napkin, and folds it corner to corner into a square with his unsteady, bony hands.

I saw it all, and I would not go into the room to have my vision shattered.

Mr. Saxe pulled me back, asking, “May I give you a piece of advice?”

“You never held back before.”

“Return to Old Man.”

“But you told me to stay away from Chinese Hospital. You told me that right in this room, not a month ago.”

“It was right then. Now I see it's right for you to go there. Find out what's waiting for you.”

“Are we sure I want to find out?”

“When the time is right,” he said.

With Darlene gone, and Pammy only a shadow of her former self, we seemed so small and cozy around the dinner table. Still, I knew the facts. In July, when Jo turned eighteen, she would have to leave Anza House and find a place of her own. Pammy's foster family waited impatiently for her. If she didn't come back soon, they'd be forced to take some other poor, misguided wench off the streets. And Sylvia's family wasn't entirely vicious. They were in family therapy together, twice a week. Sylvia's migraines were under control. It was only a matter of weeks before she'd be ready to go home.

Those nights, though, I would sit at the dinner table, with Elizabeth at the head, and two of us on either side of her, and I would imagine that we were a family at Sunday dinner, after church. I'd look from one person to the next—at Pammy's paper-thin white skin and slim body; at Jo's dancing, cutting eyes; at Elizabeth's smile, full of kindness and authority; at Sylvia's cheeks, which were beginning to sag as the pounds dropped away. I would imagine I was the mother of these four girls (I thought of Elizabeth as a girl, those evenings), and I hoped they would never marry and leave me.

By dessert time I would feel the crackling log fire bursting to life in the den, where we would all go to knit, or do needlepoint, or draw, or write letters. Where had I gotten such romantic notions? I had to remind myself that I was Eliza Doolittle, fork-lifted down into a scene from
Little Women
. We had no den. We had no fireplace. After dinner we'd hit the TV or the telephone, even resort to doing homework. Two or three radios would blast, the dishwasher would be roaring, someone would put the ironing board up in the living room. That was the closest we came to having a cozy fire. Still, those evenings were very precious and predictable.

On Thursday night, May 26, all hell broke loose. Carmella Bridges invaded Anza House. Like the men at Pearl Harbor, we weren't ready for attack.

Carmella was nearly six feet tall. She should have been measured in hands, like a horse. If you can imagine anyone strutting with a policeman grafted to each arm, you can picture Carmella's entrance. The story was, she'd pulled a knife on her science teacher in the parking lot of the junior high. Why? Because he'd spent forty-two minutes talking about evolution, and this wasn't what she got in church.

“Whatchu staring at?” she shouted at us. We'd made a wide path for her and were lined up on opposite sides of the parade ground. “You never seen cops here before?”

We'd seen them. It was Carmella Bridges who intrigued us.

“You gonna leave me here with these wimps?” Suddenly she and the cops were in league together; we were the enemy.

“Welcome, Carmella. This is Jo,” Elizabeth said, “and Sylvia. That one's Greta. The little one's Pammy.”

Carmella gave us a cold stare. I dared to look up into her bloodshot eyes. She looked like she hadn't slept in three days. She wore a yellow turban on her head, and bits of brown fuzzy hair stuck out all around it.

“I can't stay in this place,” she bellowed.

“However, Judge Corbett says you can,” Elizabeth reminded her. “Maybe you'll get used to being here. Maybe not. At least give it a try.”

“Whatchu got, nine o'clock curfew?”

“Ten-thirty,” Jo said.

Carmella reeled around. “Did I ast you?”

“Let me take you up to your room.” Elizabeth firmly guided the hulk of Carmella toward the staircase. Pammy was trembling. She must have thought Carmella would be assigned to her room.

Jo asked, “Are you bunking Carmella with me, because if you are—”

“I tell you now, I ain't gonna live with that one,” Carmella announced. She waved an elbow in Jo's general direction. “Because that red hair is gonna give me nightmares.”

“Relax, girls. Carmella's going to have the room down the hall.”

We all sighed in relief: she'd have the isolation room. Elizabeth signed some papers and dismissed the policemen. She led Carmella up the stairs. We closed ranks behind her and followed, stopping in the hall for some clean sheets, which Elizabeth tossed on Carmella's bed. Sylvia brought in a couple of towels. There was no luggage. I wondered if Carmella would wear the same sagging brown cords and the Hawaiian print halter top to school tomorrow. Would they let her back in school after she tried to stab that teacher? I didn't have long to wonder, because Carmella was issuing a proclamation: “You all turn around and get out of my room.” We skittered like spiders! Elizabeth bravely closed the door and was in there alone with her. We listened at every available crack.

“Carmella, I'm going to give you fifteen minutes to figure out where things are up here and wash up or do whatever you have to in the john. After that, you're in here till wake-up in the morning.”

“I don't need nothin' down the hall.”

“Wait here. I'll go get you one of my nightgowns to wear. And I'll get you a toothbrush.”

“I tole you, I don't need nothin'.”

“Right.” Elizabeth stepped over us on her way to her room. In a minute she was back with a flannel flower-print granny gown folded into a neat package, and a toothbrush sealed in cellophane, the kind the dentist gives you free. She knocked on Carmella's door, and getting no response, went on in.

“Whatchu doin' back here?”

“I just came to say good night, Carmella,” Elizabeth said sweetly. She came out, kicked us gently aside, and locked Carmella's door. In all the months I'd been at Anza House, no one had ever been locked in her room. Not just rumors, there were changes in the wind as well.

16

You could take a bus just out of town to Colma, where most of the San Francisco cemeteries were. It seemed like a good place to meet, if you didn't want anyone to follow you or see you.

There was a sort of gazebo outside the mausoleum at Heavenly Peace, and that's where I met my mother, Marla, on Saturday morning. I watched her climb up the hill from the bus stop. She was wearing beautiful wine-colored boots and an expensive-looking maroon tweed suit. She seemed very sophisticated to me, with her hat tilted at a chic angle. Then again, she could have come in army fatigues, and she would have looked beautiful to me. It was three months since I'd seen her. I ran to meet her halfway down the hill, to haul her the rest of the way up. For a moment I forgot that she wasn't a mother to win state fair prizes. I was just happy to see her, and proud to be seen with a woman so elegantly decorated.

She was out of breath by the time we reached the top of the hill. We sat in the gazebo holding hands, like second-graders. I couldn't remember ever feeling better with her.

“You look just terrific, sweetie. You're wearing your hair much more girlish.” (She hadn't seen me since I'd given up the cinnamon rolls for the straight look. Now I simply blow-dried my hair, away from my face.) “And look at you—you ditched the overalls. You look so nice and slim in jeans and that turtleneck. In fact, you look like a million bucks.”

“You're the one who looks so good, Marla.”

“Well, then, style must just run in the Janssen family.” She giggled in a lighthearted way. Under it, though, she seemed a little nervous. I knew she had something important to say, or she never would have risked so much to meet me. “Listen, sweetie, I've got something to tell you.”

It sounded bad. My hand turned cold in hers.

“I, uh, I'm not getting any younger.”

“You're only thirty-two. You're younger than most people's mothers.”

“Oh, yeah, compared to what. But it's like baseball players. After thirty-five you're no good on the field, to play
or
trade. Anyway, there's other reasons. I'm quitting Hackey.”

Quitting Hackey? Who would look after her? It wasn't as though she had social security and sick leave and health insurance. “Ohhh.” I caught my breath. “You mean quitting Hackey, or quitting work?”

“Both.”

“What are you going to do, then?”

“You'll laugh. I'm signed up for this computer programming course.”

Laugh? I thought I'd fall off the bench! Marla Janssen sitting in front of an IBM terminal eight hours a day? It was hilarious.

Her eyes, behind those huge tinted lenses, seemed wounded. “It's a surprise, but I'm getting my G.E.D.”

“You're graduating from high school?”